


Streams That Never Find The Sea

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [35]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-30
Updated: 2013-06-30
Packaged: 2017-12-16 16:10:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/863973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times when Lester thinks that dealing with anomalies is less stressful tha waiting around while his boyfriend goes cave diving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Streams That Never Find The Sea

_Roads go ever ever on,_  
 _Over rock and under tree,_  
 _By caves where never sun has shone,_  
 _By streams that never find the sea;_

Sir James Lester stared into the dark pool, watching the bubbles rising to the surface in the light of his caving lamp. He pulled his glove back, glancing down at his watch. Lyle was carrying two cylinders that would give him a maximum dive time of around an hour and a half, which meant he should dive for no longer than half an hour on the way into the sump, leaving him half an hour for the return, and half an hour in reserve. What was known as the thirds rule.

There was enough spare kit at the sump for Lester to dive as well, if his lover didn’t return in the agreed time. Jon had insisted that he could field one of the other guys on the digging team for back-up, knowing that Lester hadn’t dived since the trip through the Devil’s Crowll, but he’d refused. He was too bloody stubborn to let anyone take his place, and anyway, he’d spent around 20 hours of his life over the past two months digging like a mole down this God forsaken hole in the ground, and he had no intention of passing up the chance of being in on the next breakthrough.

They’d missed the first major extension made in the cave as a result of the need to deal with a rather stubborn herd of oversized sauropods, who had been determined to munch their way down the entire length of the avenue in Savernake Forest. Wile they’d been playing silly buggers, some of the lads on Mendip had been working underground most of the day. The dig had given up its secrets late afternoon, and by the time the pub had opened, they’d explored nearly 300 metres of new cave passage, which was large, well decorated and ended in a sump.

Lyle had received a text just after he’d helped to shove the last of the intruders back through the anomaly, which said: _Fking big. Bring your diving kit_

The rest of the team had stared in incomprehension as Lyle and the rest of the Special Forces cavers had whooped in delight at the news. They’d been even more surprised when Lester had appeared and promptly demanded more detail. When he’d waved a hand airily and had told them the reports would wait until tomorrow, a casual observer would have been forgiven for thinking he’d just declared the equivalent of a public holiday. It had been worth it for the look on Cutter’s face.

It had turned out that two inlets remained unpushed, in addition to the sump, but it had been a week before another decent-sized team could be assembled. Lyle had spent the week like a cat on hot bricks, certain that another anomaly would pop up and spoil his fun at the weekend. Much to their collective surprise, the rest of the week had been peaceful, leaving Lester to catch up on some much-needed paperwork, and on Friday night, they’d been able to head off to the Mendips.

So here he was, freezing his butt off on a rock, while another group were doing their best to dig their way through a sand choke in the larger of the two inlets, while Lyle made an attempt on the sump.

Lester looked at his watched again. Ten minutes.

He shivered.

The adrenaline rush he’d got from worming his way down through what was, without a shadow of a doubt, the most dangerous bloody boulder choke he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter, was wearing off. Even the liberal application of cement on the worst examples of what cavers described as hanging death had failed to stabilise the worst parts, and even the several tons of scaffolding bars inserted in various places to hold back loose rocks hadn’t done much to improve his confidence in his surroundings.

He knew perfectly well that he could keep himself warm by helping the others shift sand, but that would have meant leaving the sump pool. Leaving Lyle. The chances were that his lover would be back in the next five minutes, alternately cursing the visibility and the inevitable choke, but even so, the truth was that he was staying put.

He knew perfectly well that he should be moving about, in an attempt to keep the cold from seeping into his bones, but instead, he emptied spare kit out of one of the tackle bags and used that to pad the rock underneath him providing some insulation. It wasn’t the first time he’d sat next to a sump, waiting for someone to return from a dive, God knows he’d done it often enough for Ralph when they’d been at university together, but deep down, he knew that what Lyle was doing now was probably even more dangerous than the job the soldier did for a living. Lester remembered far to well the names of all those he’d known who’d died doing this crazy activity. Caving itself was actually safe by comparison, but cave diving – no, that was anything but safe.

_Over snow by winter sown,_  
 _And through the merry flowers of June,_  
 _Over grass and over stone,_  
 _And under mountains of the moon._

The Mountains of the Moon. Cavers were inventive when it came to names, but even he’d had to admit that it was a surprisingly apt name for the huge, glistening white banks of stalagmite, flowing down over the passage walls and spreading like a frozen river over at least half the width of the passage. The photos he’d seen last night in the Hunter’s Lodge Inn, an impressively unreconstructed pub which stood stark and grey, just over a mile from the cottage he and his brother owned, didn’t do the place justice, but then photographs never did.

Come on, Jon, he thought. It’s been half an hour now. You should be back by now, you bugger. It’s bound to have closed down, it always fucking well does.

Lester pulled his glove off and reached down into the water, holding the thin nylon diving line loosely between his fingers, seeing if he could feel any movement that might herald his lover’s return.

Nothing.

Nothing apart from the chill of the water, anyway. Damn it, he couldn’t sit still any longer. Another five minutes and he’d consider kitting up, just in case. He’d done that in the Crowll, hoping all the while that he wouldn’t have to enter the water, but it had proved a vain hope then as well. Lester wasn’t by nature an optimist. More years than he cared to remember of working for Her Majesty’s Government had taught him the hard way that what could go wrong would indeed do so - generally in quite the most spectacular fashion. And the last few months working with Cutter and the Scooby Gang had done nothing to change that view. It was nothing short of a miracle that they’d kept the whole charade out of the papers so long.

Well, that and some inspired spin-doctoring by himself and the ever capable Claudia Brown. Who, if he wasn’t very much mistaken, was now what could be described as an item with the professor. Or, in Lyle’s more earthy terms, they were obviously fucking like bunnies. He wondered idly what the ex-Mrs Cutter thought of that as a development. They hadn’t seen much of her lately, not since her appearances in Cumbria. He rather hoped that Ryan’s equally feisty ex-wife’s threat to feed her to a bunch of over-sized and evil-tempered prehistoric chickens might have persuaded her to lie low for a while.

_Roads go ever ever on_   
_Under cloud and under star,_   
_Yet feet that wandering have gone_   
_Turn at last to home afar._

The line jerked under his fingers and his heat rate leapt up several notches.

There was no doubt about it. The line was moving. He exhaled a long breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding. The line was dancing in the water now, and in a matter of minutes, he could see a faint glimmer of light, reflecting slightly green in the muddy water of the sump.

A cloud of silt swirled up from the bottom, obscuring the light, and for a sickening moment Lester remembered the awful moment in the aptly-named Devil’s Crowll when his hand had settled on something in the silt of the passage floor which had turned out the be the severed head of a cave diver, torn to pieces by a mastodonsaurus, which was an ugly bastard with a temper to match. His stomach lurched and sickness rose in his throat. He swallowed heavily. Lyle would have something to say about it if he puked in the sump, that was for sure.

A moment later, Lyle’s caving helmet broke the surface of the water and then he was scrabbling for purchase on the rocks, spitting his gag out and exclaiming, “It goes! Another 300 fucking metres at least!”

“The sump?”

Lyle grinned. “No, what’s on the other side. The sump’s a bitch. The viz is crap and there’s a nasty pinch point in the middle …. I had to take my bloody kit off and feed the bottle through in front of me …. But it fucking goes!”

Lester laughed, sharing Lyle’s delight, then he said quietly, “You do realise you scared me fucking silly, don’t you?”

For a moment, Lyle’s hazel eyes were sober, and he nodded, apologetically. Then sheer exuberance took over again and he dragged Lester into a cold, wet kiss. Tongues met, warm and demanding, jostling briefly for position, before Lyle established dominance, and Lester was content to let his lover take the lead. Warmth flared in his belly and in spite of the cold, he found himself getting hard.

A one-piece wetsuit was not the most comfortable of garments to get an erection in, and he was conscious of the fact that there was a group of cavers nearby who could turn up at any time, but none of that mattered a monkey’s damn. He let Lyle deepen the kiss, forcing him back across the rock he’d been sitting on, then a hand pressed hard against his cock and he arched up into his lover’s touch.

Lyle raked a thumb down him, and even through five millimetres of neoprene it felt fucking good.

He gasped into the soldier’s mouth, hands clutching at Lyle’s shoulders.

Finger and thumb moved together and Lester’s climax took him almost by surprise. He jerked up, only to find himself held firmly in place by two strong hands. Lyle kissed him through the last of the aftershocks, fierce determination gradually being replaced by gentle, almost languid kisses.

_Eyes that fire and sword have seen_  
 _And horror in the halls of stone_  
 _Look at last on meadows green_  
 _And trees and hills they long have known._

Jon Lyle pulled back far enough to mutter, “Hi, honey, I’m home,” before noises from further up the passage made both men draw apart. “You owe me,” grinned Lyle. “I’m desperate for a piss, and I’m not gonna manage that with a hard on.”

Lester returned the grin, and planted one final kiss on his lover’s freezing cold nose. “I’ll make it up to you later, darling.”


End file.
